Having a learning curve using photoshop.....need help with WB

[concept3]

finally got a new computer and got photoshop to play with pics that have too much blue on them. I take pics for our local reef club, and some of member's tanks are just too blue to take a decent pic. I was hoping photoshop could fix the white balance but didn't realize there was a learining curve. can anyone point me in the right direction?


here are a few examples of pics that I want to white balance out:

Feel free to help out Wbalance them/add/subtract if you have photoshop and please please please explain how you did it

Thanks in advance!!!


-Merv

This is RichT's tank, our May host for 2006

 

[Gottcha]

im no photoshop expert but try ctrl + shift + L

im using ps cs2 and you go to image ... adjustments and a few settingscan be changed there.

 

[gregr]

Not sure what the hickup was but we can post to this thread again now.

This is what I suggested:
Ideally you'd be shooting in RAW mode so you can adjust the color temp in the software- do you have a camera that has RAW or NEF?
To make the adjustments you want you should be using a new adjustment layer for each adjustment. Not sure how much you know already about PS but I hear layers are the way to go
The opposite of blue is yellow- so I'd start at image>>adjustments>>color balance and slide the bottom slider away from blue towards yellow.
Another way to go about fixing color casts is image>>adjustments>>levels and in the Channel drop-down box change it from RGB to blue and play with the sliders in the histogram. You can do the same thing via curves although the changes will be more subtle.
Hopefully others will add their suggestions and I'll learn something too
Greg

 

[astrogazer]

This is a quick levels tweak, I use 2 adjustment layers, both levels, 1 of them I use to adjust contrast, the other I use to balance the white levels. This way I can independantly adjust their opacity to fine tune the result. The you can flatten the layers into 1.

This was a quickie touchup, minute or less. PS makes it easy, with a little practice

 

[jwedehase]

Those top ones are pretty dark, so I took a shot at Rich's tank.

Open.
Auto Levels (Shift-Ctrl-L). This made it a little red.
Levels toolbox is your friend(Ctrl-L) to adjust colors
Slide center slider to the left, changing values up top to: 0, 1.40, 255
Open Red channel (ctrl-1), slide right to 0.80
Open Blue channel (ctrl-3), slide left to 1.20
Unsharp Mask, values of 200%, 0.3 width, 5 threshhold

These are just a "quick and dirty." With more time, you could certainly fine tune a lot more.

Now a couple things that will help go a LONG way. Always shoot squared up perpendicular to the glass, this will minimize distortion. You will also see better results from turning off all the room lighting, eliminating people and background reflecting off the glass. I would have liked to brighten this photo a little more, but there was some creepy guy in the glass giving me the eveil eye!

 

[concept3]

:lol: the tank is a room divider. The tank owner is RichT and I was given title of papparazzi for a day. Dr. Mac was there too, but that's a different WB subject, LOL


This is what I was able to balance out with a little play:

 

[MiddletonMark]

Just played with one photo, though having lights on in the room and other folks checking out the tank visible will be a problem.

I'm using an old version of PS here, and would totally concur with the suggestion to make a duplicate layer ... work on that.
If everything is perfect, you can use that. If you like a little of the original photo, you can slider the opacity for that layer down to 60% [or somewhere else] to mix the two nicely.

What I did here:

was:
Image>Adjust>Levels
--- click the eyedropper on the right, [light/white] and locate a definitive white point [like the stripe on the clown ...] and click on what `should' be the most intensely white point.
This should significantly alter the coloration. It may be good, it may require a ctrl-Z to undo and try again. Some photos might not lend themselves to this.
[this one is close to going a bit too orange/pink/maroon ... but the second adjustment helps]
Don't hit ok yet, you're not done

Then, within that levels menu, in the `graph' portion, I took the middle slider [at the bottom] and slid it so that the middle # above that graph read something like 1.45 or so. You can just punch in different numbers slowly moving up from 1 in .1 increments and see what happens.

Often such adjustments, IMO tend to wash out the colors - and normally do leave some sort weird coloration places [turquoise on the sandbed, blue on the rocks here].

What jwedehase does is an even better method than this really, but for a simple one, this works close enough.

Do realize that what might look like minimal adjustments on your end might look like nothing/too much to others ... check out your own pics at work sometimes, or at a friends, or on the laptop vs. desktop. After a couple, you might notice something, or nothing, but useful to see how your manipulation looks IMO.
Your monitor may/may-not be representative of the average.

 

[Benny Z]

i simiply created a new adjustment layer (levels) and clicked "auto".

then i switched to lab color mode, selected the highlights layer, and used the unsharpen mask on the black and white layer only, then switched back to rgb color.

(original refresher)

 

[astrogazer]

Ok ... so somebody take care of the last one ...

 

[gregr]

Ok ... so somebody take care of the last one ...

Just happened to have Photoshop open

The color wasn't bad on this one at all- I just moved the slider from blue to yellow a bit and used shadows and highlights to open up the blacks a bit, then a small levels adjustment to brighten a tad more and there you have it
Oh yeah- here's the original again:

 

[astrogazer]

Nicely done all, just goes to show that taking the picture is only half the job.

I highly reccomend Photoshop for dummies, an excellent training resource for those looking for the basics such the level and color correcting done above.

 

[gregr]

Thanks. Yeah, the editing can be extremely important for sure- especially for aquarium photos because the lighting is so off the scale that significant help is often needed.

 

[concept3]

well, here's a few more I played with tonight. enjoy the pics! and thanks for taking the time to play. (Darn 20K lights :lol: )



PS some of them still have a slight blue tint. I left it this way since it very closely represents the lighting in his tank.

 

[astrogazer]

Think you're getting the hang of it, still a little blue in some of the first ones. Little practice goes a long way.

 

[comatose]

by the way, i love the bridge effect with the corals going across it, looks awsome,